Only One
by Romanec
Summary: First Class. Childhood is never easy, not when the child is different. But somehow, despite all the pain, it works out in the end. Features all the children and Charles and Erik.
1. Only One

_**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men. Marvel does.**_

**A/N: Writer's block buster. I've taken on the challenge of posting anything I write. Wh00t. Anyway, I'm probably wrong on all the ages. Oh well. :)**

**Warning: Dark sensitive themes ahead. Hinted at: child abuse, suicidal thoughts, murder, etc. Don't like, don't read.**

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><p><strong>Only One<strong>

Charles is only eleven, but he can hear as, every night, a piece of his mother shatters behind her bedroom door.

He can see her breaking during the day when they share meals, her facade cracking with every sip of alcohol she drinks. Her eyes always stay on him, but her smiles are empty and forced and so close to dead that all he does is look away.

Eventually he learns to pretend back.

But for now, his own wounds are still deep, though the ones that are physical have turned to thick, white scars that crisscross and ridge. They are more like a tight, woven binding rope that keeps his mind from breaking open and just _taking it all _- a reminder of what happens when he _does._

He's tired of the images of fire and faces and screams and blood. He's tired of the phantom pain that is as real as it's not.

His mother's thoughts of _allyourfault_ and _whyaren'tyoutheonewho'sdeadIhateyou_ are not silent to him, but even at eleven Charles can't hate her for it. Won't hate her for it. Because her first husband is dead and her second husband is dead and he is still alive and alone because of it.

Eleven, and completely alone.

**-X-**

Erik is fourteen, and death has become as natural to him as the ever overcast skies that have shadowed his life. He can look at the dead and dying and show nothing.

He shows nothing even when Herr Doktor takes him downstairs for another medical examination and uses the tools that he should be able to control but can't because he's _weak_.

Herr Doktor, whose hand on his shoulder is firm and constant and unrelenting every day. Right on top of the scars he had caused. Scars Erik secretly relishes in seeing in the reflection of his mirror when he's alone.

He has lived in the camps for a year and six months (he's kept count, though he doesn't know why), but now he's in a small room Herr Doktor gave to him as a reward when he killed a Jewish man and his two young sons by the metal collars on their throats. His own room, with his own bed, and his own soft pillows, and a colorful blanket that's too thin for warmth and too frail to string up and use as a noose. Which he knows for a fact.

He's tried. Several times.

But he's fourteen, and he fails, as he has always failed, and every night, Erik twists and turns for hours he cannot afford to spare, before falling asleep to his mother's voice and the echoes of a single gunshot and an endless count of _one, two, three..._

**-X-**

Raven doesn't know how old she is, and frankly she doesn't quite care.

It is a wonder she knows or even wants her name.

She knows that once, there were strong hands - warm, familiar, _safe _hands - holding her under freezing water in a river somewhere. She knows she got away, and she knows that she hates her parents, even if she can't remember their faces.

She has tried, a few times, to show herself to people, to find someone who can look past her appearance of blue scaly skin and large yellow eyes, and maybe give her a chance. Her voice is high-pitched, her height short, and she knows she is not much larger than the little girls who walk with their daddies down the streets. And people love little girls, so why not her?

But every time, people scream and curse, and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they hurt, and Raven finds herself escaping again.

She learns to pretend. Watches as her skin turns to black to white to old to young to _normal_ and _natural. _She can hold her transformations for a full thirty minutes before she gets tired.

And so spends her days hiding in plain sight, mingling and exploring and trying to find a way _out_, and she spends her nights stealing what she can - bits of food off of the plates of outside diners, wallets when she can - to survive. It hasn't yet occurred to her what she is capable of doing. All she knows is that she isn't normal, and that she's alone, and that people hate her so she has to keep moving.

Curling up in the back of an alley, eating, and pretending she doesn't want to cry.

**-X-**

When Ana was ten, she did not understand why no one else thought the wings that suddenly sprouted from the rash on her back were pretty like the ones on the dragonflies during the summer.

She didn't know that when her mama took her across the border to an American city, it was to save her pretty wings, and her life, from her papa's axe.

Her mama said her wings were a curse, a punishment from God, and made her kneel and pray for forgiveness every hour. She was thirteen before her pretty wings, not so pretty anymore, wrapped themselves around her shoulders and her back to form tattoos of their skeletal structure. She was thirteen when her mama left to return to Mexico and to her papa and left her alone because, though hidden, her punishment was still there and still unforgiven.

She didn't stay alone for long. Dark hair, long legs, face defined by Spanish features -she was exotic. And people of the wrong sort took notice.

Ana is fourteen when she takes her first steps onto the stage, her tattoos completely exposed, and becomes "Angel".

And that night, vomiting in the trash and holding more money than she's ever known, she curses her mama and spits in the dirt, and watches as it sparks.

**-X-**

Sean is nine. He has red hair, countless freckles, dimples that show brilliantly when he smiles, and the faintest hints of a quickly fading Irish accent.

He lives with his immigrant aunt and American uncle in a pretty suburban area where half of the neighborhood coo over how adorable he is, and the other half ignore his outsider existence all together.

Sean never really notices them, because the sky is pretty and the sun is warm and his aunt tucks him into bed every night with stories of parents he can't remember.

And he feels safe.

Until the night his uncle, smelling of that yucky drink that makes his aunt so mad, creeps into his room and tells him not to say a word. But Sean screams, and screams louder still when his uncle hits him across the face. Screams and screams until the glass is suddenly cracking and breaking and the neighbors' dogs are howling and there is blood leaking from his uncle's ears and eyes as he finally flees the room.

Screams until the sobs take over.

At nine, Sean is sent away. His aunt says it is the best for him, but he notices the way his uncle smiles, and the way she clutches his hand.

**-X-**

Hank is fifteen. Fifteen, technically, is still considered a child. Fifteen, technically, means that Hank should still be with his parents, in his parents' house, eating his mother's cooking, talking about his father's day at work before a game of catch. That is what fifteen means. Hank has asked.

But Hank does not have parents - he does not even remember them. He has never eaten his mother's cooking and he has never asked his father about his day at work and he has certainly _never_ played catch. He has never seen the point.

Hank is fifteen, and he is preparing to graduate from Harvard along with other men who are almost twice his age. He is quiet and shy and keeps to himself, offering up mumbles when addressed by anyone who is not a professor and completely respectful when it _is _a professor. He is intelligent - beyond intelligent - and bright and honest and kind and he writes once a week to the nuns who raised him at the orphanage, telling them everything he can fit onto paper.

They always write back, telling him what a good boy he is, how wonderful life is for him, but never failing to remind him that, no matter how wonderful things are, he cannot stop hiding. Because if he does, then life will not be so wonderful anymore.

And so Hank walks through his final days of campus when his legs want to run, speaking softly when he wants to roar, and lets his too-small but perfectly normal shoes pinch the feet he keeps hidden from the world.

And tries not to flinch when the Dean pulls him aside, ecstatic, to tell him the CIA wants to speak with him.

**-X-**

Armando is fourteen, and doesn't speak.

Every day he walks two blocks to get to the bus to head to work, head down, and doesn't speak when the driver barks "to the back, boy!" while the white passengers snicker.

His name is Armando, but his friends call him Darwin to the point where it sticks. It's not a nickname lightly given. If anything, it's always said with a sneer, with a little bit of hate and a whole lot of anger. Darwin, after of Charles Darwin, whose theories of evolution go against his own religion.

Because Armando adapts to survive. He doesn't stand up against the white men even as they're shoving him off the sidewalk and into the road because the sidewalk is a "white man's right". He doesn't report his beatings to the police, even as they gather around asking questions about the fight, because they're already cuffing him and just _begging_ for a reason to add to his bruises.

He does, however, speak up when, one day, an older white gentlemen pushes his older sister to the ground for moving too slow, spitting "colored trash" like poison and aiming a kick. Armando gets there just before the foot hits her, and instead it hits him in the back.

And he doesn't feel a thing, even as more kicks come flying, even as his sister stares up at him from under his arms with wide, horrified eyes. He feels nothing.

Armando is fourteen, silent, and being led away to jail by false claims from an aggravated attacker. His sister is safe and dismissed, and he has no injuries to speak of while the man's foot is completely shattered.

When asked for his name, he only says "Darwin".

**-X-**

Alex is seventeen, and has not considered himself a child in a long time. Not since he was fifteen and blew a hole through the room in a moment of anger and red that almost killed his baby brother.

He can still remember the screaming and the toddler wailing from a still-forming blister on his stomach from too close of a call.

His parents kick him out then and there. And Alex doesn't blame them, though he wishes they would have just hugged him and helped him and let him _stay_.

Because the lasers that shoot from his body scare the hell out of him, too.

He's been in the county jail four times for bar fights that he doesn't give up until he's cuffed, but keeps getting released because they don't know he's homeless, only that he's young and has a "bright future if you would just _try_ to make something of yourself, buddy".

The words only fill him with more anger, more self-loathing, and every morning he falls asleep to the memories of his family that turn into nightmares of screams and fires and deaths caused by him. Wakes up every night with damp eyes he scrubs away and a body humming with so much fire that he just wants to explode and be dead already.

His fifth time in jail starts with him beating up some drunk in a pool hall who doesn't understand that when a girl says "no", she means "no" - he hasn't stopped throwing punches even after the man was unconscious and bleeding more than he should. Alex is angry - beyond angry - and he's been on edge for days, and it's just all done. When the man's friends step in to save their drunken buddy and take his place in the fight, something in Alex snaps, and suddenly all he sees is red.

No one knows exactly how the fire started, or how the men were so badly burned, but every witness is quick to blame Alex anyway. Since he's already got a record, the cops take him away, his knuckles still bloody and his body still humming. They get to the station and give him a phone call to let his parents know what's going on. He doesn't tell them that they won't care.

But he _does_ use the call, and it _is_ to ring his parents, but only to say "I love you you were right I'm sorry I never met to hurt him". He doesn't mention his arrest, or the pool hall.

He's seventeen, but the judge decides this offence - with so many people injured and the violence he exhibited - on top of his others is worthy of a harsher punishment.

Five years in prison.

Alex is seventeen, and in _prison_ he pleads for solitary confinement, before he punches a guard and knocks out two inmates to get there.

It's safer that way.

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><p>Childhood is never easy. Not when the child is different.<p>

But somehow, it works out.

Raven stumbles across Xavier Mansion in Westchester, New York, in the dead of night. She's so hungry that she sneaks right in, disguising herself as a woman who frequents most of the pictures, and digs around for food. It is there that she's confronted by Charles, twelve, and for the first time finds someone who isn't afraid of her natural appearance. He gives her food, a home, and an age for the first time, even if it's just a guess - she's ten.

Erik is thirty-two and drowning, using his abilities to hold onto a submarine he can't force from the water - a submarine caring Herr Doktor. Schmitt. _Shaw_. His lungs are burning, but all he can hear is the count of three, and a gun shot that makes him flinch. He almost doesn't believe that the arms suddenly wrapping around him are real, or the voice inside of his head assuring him that he's going to be fine. Not until he's above water, pushing away from the man who introduces himself as Charles Xavier, who reveals that he, like Erik, is very different. Who tells him he isn't alone.

Hank is nineteen and still hiding, deep within the labs of the CIA facility, when his boss brings in three others - three others who are like him. Three other "mutants". One who steps up, all smiles and happiness and _respect_, and accidentally reveals Hank for what he truly his. But, in spite of his reluctance, Hank will never deny how wonderful it felt to free his feet, to be himself and receive _awe_ instead of disgust, to have a pretty girl stare him in the eye even as he's hanging upside down, and tell him, for the first time that he's genuinely heard it, that he's _amazing._

Angel is seventeen, dancing for cash as she's done for years, when two men walk into the club and offer her more money than she's seen in a long time. Even though she knows what such dough entails, she takes it and leads them to a private room. But instead of letting her start, they speak oddly, and then the ice bucket containing the champagne is suddenly floating in thin air, under one of the men's command. The knowing looks they cast her, the encouraging and understanding vibes she can just _feel_ coming from them, brings out her first real smile in years, and she finally lets her pretty wings loose. She almost cries when the other man gently asks her if she wants a job where she can keep her clothes on.

Alex is eighteen and hasn't spoken more than three words to anyone in a year. He sits in his tiny windowless cell, and every day grinds his teeth against the pain the unused energy surges through his body. He refuses to go out for exercise, knowing outside means socialization means confrontations means _anger _and he refuses to hurt anyone else. So he's surprised when his cell opens to reveal two distinguished but _un_official looking men who say they are there to get him out. He's suspicious, and unwanting - it's not safe out there - but there's a voice in his head, kind and soft chanting _it'sokayAlex heretohelp it'sokay you'resafenow _that pushes him to leave with them. And when they stop the car a few miles away in an empty field to let him release the energy that's_ killing _him, the taller man patting his shoulder after he lights the whole _thing_ on fire, something feels okay.

Sean is sixteen, and he's still all red hair and freckles, but his accent is completely gone and he never smiles enough anymore for his dimples to show. He's lived in foster care until last year, when he skipped out with his eighteen-year-old "brother" to live in a communal apartment with six other people and a very nice bong that gives a high he loves and erases images he doesn't. In fact, said bong is currently the reason he's alone in an aquarium (honestly, he hates fish), shot down by a beautiful girl whose name he didn't even know and currently cornered by two men who are smiling in a way he's not familiar with. But when he opens his mouth to scream (and seriously, screw the fish), one of the men taps his head and _Please don't do that Sean we aren't here to harm you _in his mind keeps his mouth closed, because that man's lips _didn't move_ with his voice. His eyes are so wide he feels like they're growing, and the other man, looking between the two of them for a second, simply shrugs and says "Did you think it was only you?" And Sean doesn't like men, but for some reason, maybe the way the metal moves in ways it shouldn't be able to or the soothing words still coming to his mind, he goes with them.

Armando ("Darwin, please. Friends call me Darwin") is twenty, sitting in the front seat of a taxi cab and waiting for customers that either don't care about the color of his skin, or consider it well-suited for the job. He's become more chatty - it's almost like a job requirement - and relaxed. The near immortality that has invaded his life for the past six years has admittedly made him cocky, but he's blocked four knifing attempts and a bullet in those six years, so he feels entitled. Nothing phases him anymore. At least not until two gentlemen, grinning in an annoying way, slip into his cab, and answer his question of destination with a request for a six hour drive and the flick of his meter to on. Without touching it. "Chauffer doesn't suit you," the taller of the two says, and the other one laughs good-naturedly in a way that makes Darwin laugh too, shaking his head and putting the car in drive. Other people with other tricks? He could dig that.

Charles is thirty. He has a degree, PhD, and is working for the CIA on a mission to save the world from Nuclear War. It should make him feel proud, important, deserving. They have a debriefing in a few hours, and that's important. But what has him smiling is the scene around him. Seven of them, himself included. _Mutants_, exposed and nonfearing and together. Shy, new, but welcoming. Relieved. _Happy_. Their feelings wash over him like the effect of drugs, pushing against the shadows of his mind and soothing over his scars of _alonelostunwanted_ like balm. He hasn't been alone since Raven came into his life, but this ... this is different. He's eternally grateful of his sister, would do anything for her, but she's smiling too - the same smile on his face, and her cast-over glance tells him she knows what he's thinking.

"What's going on in your head, Labrat?" Erik's voice is welcome, a click to his mind he can't begin to decipher. The older man is leaning in towards him, even his gaze locked on Alex and Armando (_Darwin. He prefers Darwin. Remember that, Charles old boy_) as the former violently and successfully rules a pinball game. But Erik's attention, Charles knows, is focused mostly on him, aware of him, waiting for an answer that will not deviate it. It makes Charles smile.

He takes in Raven and Angel, pressed together as the shapeshifter tries endlessly to bring the girl into more active conversation, complimenting the exposed and fluttering wings. Watches as Sean argues the laws of physics with Hank, using the jigsaw rules produced by hallucinogenic drugs (Charles will have to do something about _that_ addiction, but that's another battle) to contrast what the other is patiently explaining. And then there are Alex and Darwin and a pinball machine Charles knows will see more than endless play.

"Charles?" Erik prompts again, and the telepath turns to see the intense _metal _gaze locked on him, questioning and a small bit concerned. And he smiles, and shakes his head.

"My friend," he declares, slapping Erik on the back, and it speaks wonders when the other mutant doesn't flinch away. He laughs at the wonderful absurdity of it all. "We truly aren't alone anymore." _Family_, he thinks silently, bursting with happiness.

And while his face shows nothing, Erik's eyes glint in understanding of something else.

Commonality beyond mutation.

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><p><strong>AN:**

_I'm clueless. Should I change the rating on this? I've seen lemons be posted under "T", but sensitive themes seem to bother people more …. I don't know. :/ _

_Also. The "post anything you write" challenge, is literally that. No matter the length, if you write it, you post it. So that's what I'm doing … I think you guys should too. We need more XFC fics. … More X fics in general. So. Yes. :)_

_Anyway. Could I bug you guys for a review? Please? :3_


	2. angst drabbles

_**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men. Marvel does.**_

**A/N: First let me think all of you for your wonderful reviews. :3 I honestly wasn't expecting so many, and you guys just blew me away. I'm thrilled you liked the story.**

**Anyway, this is just a few angsty drabbles that go with this universe that popped into my head. Hope you enjoy. Special note at the bottom.**

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><p>Charles watches as Erik walks through the small field. They don't really have time for this, as far behind schedule as they are, and with their new charge in the back seat, ready to settled into Base. But the telepath can sense the underlying sorrow and need emanating from the thoughts he promised not to read. So when Erik suddenly pulled off the road, Charles had said nothing.<p>

"What's he doing?" Their new recruit - Alex - asks, but it's more to himself and as such isn't answered.

Instead, Charles just watches as his friend, so dark and menacing and hating, kneels down and plucks a fragile red poppy from the ground, and cradles it in his hands. The fragment of a thought floats freely by Charles' mind, not aimed at him but not guarded, and he grabs at it gently.

_Mother._

'_Ah, Erik,' _Charles' eyes slip closed as he takes a deep breath. _'Will there ever be peace for you, I wonder?'_

But he does not ask, and Alex does not comment, when Erik returns to the car, flower safely in check, and continues their drive.

**-X-**

Out of everyone, _Alex_ is the first one to ask (Alex, the same can't-get-over-Hank's-feet Alex), and he does so with such obliviousness and nonchalance that Raven is, for the first time she can remember, caught off guard.

"I-I'm blue," she stutters, pretty brown _normal_ eyes wide as she stares at him. "It...it's not pretty."

"Yeah. So? It's normal though, right? For you?" He stares at her hard, his own _blue_ eyes narrowed and daunting and somewhat encouraging. She can't stand it.

"No, Alex," she answers. "It's not normal." And she casts a look at Hank, who sits across from her, who looks away with a slight flush to his face that is either embarrassed or flustered. She doesn't know which, just that he looks away.

But Alex only cocks an eyebrow and huffs, before intoning, "Whatever," and returning to Darwin and their pinball game.

**-X-**

Their first night together, and it's with Darwin that Sean slips up with among their small group. Alex looks mean but Sean can tell something about him hurts, too. Hank is big (he towers over Sean like a skyscraper), but he's gentle and shy and makes Sean laugh with his lectures against hallucinogenic drugs. The girls are sweet and pose no problems at all.

But Darwin is loud. Darwin is tall (taller than Hank). Darwin has that world-weary look but it's not in a way that Sean can relate to. Darwin, Sean stays away from.

Except the pinball machine he and Alex have _not _left alone since they got there is right next to the refrigerator and the red-haired teenager is _hungry_. It's Alex's turn on the handles, but Darwin is pressed close and goading him and occupied so Sean thinks it's safe.

But Sean, in his determination to get to the refrigerator _quickly_, head down, misses when the other boy goes for it at the same time. All he sees is a big looming body and a hand coming at him, and his scream is loud and startled and shatters the game's covering and cracks the window.

"Sean?" He hears Darwin call, and he thinks that maybe it sounds a little confused, a little hurt, but he's already darting down the hall and gone.

**-X-**

Darwin looks at Angel's wings like they're the prettiest things he's ever seen. She smiles and preens at his attentions because he's different too, and she likes that. But then he looks into her eyes and her smile dims.

"What?" She demands.

"Nothing, sorry. It's nothing." And he laughs, trying to play it off, but she continues to scowl and after a few seconds of nervous shuffling he finally says, "You remind me of my sister."

He says it with a bright, shy smile, and it's all she can do to keep hers in place and flutter her wings as though complimented. She always reminds someone of someone else.

**-X-**

Hank pours over his notes while the others pour themselves glasses of alcohol. He doesn't ask where they got it, or whether they should have it, because as long as they don't acknowledge him he doesn't have to acknowledge that and then he can stay out of trouble.

But somehow Raven manages to drag him from the table and to a couch in the common sitting area, where she sits on one side of him, and Sean presses closer than necessary into the other (Hank says nothing. He's been in an orphanage and he knows that look). They're joking and laughing and Raven's trying to get him to drink and then Angel, smiling sweetly and totally unknowing, asks, "So, Hank. What does it feel like to not have to hide yourself?"

And he knows she means _'what does it feel like to be able to walk outside without shapeshifting or tattoos or the fear that you will hurt someone?'_, because even he knows that, compared to theirs, his mutation is relatively simple. But "hide" is still echoing and loud and he pushes Raven's hand of offered alcohol away with a little more force than necessary. It splashes.

"I wouldn't know."

**-X-**

Alex is sitting alone on the now-crumpled sofa, surrounded by now-crumbled walls and tapping his feet on now-shattered glass. He watches without moving as a group of uniformed men carefully extract items from the room - their room - piece by piece. His knee jitters as they slowly lift the pinball machine that groans in response.

There's a bit of dust clenched in his hand. Dust and dirt and soot, from where Darwin had stood and died.

Died, by Alex's powers.

"You need to move, son," a man says, tight-lipped and scowling. Alex stands and stares the man in the eye. It's dejavu and Darwin was his brother and this man is his dad and he wishes he was back in solitary.

"I'm not your son."

**-X-**

Erik stares out the window of their new establishment, uneasy and suspicious and eager to just be moving _on_ already. Raven has just finished giving them her tour of the Xavier Mansion, and now they're in the library.

Charles disappeared somewhere in the beginning of it, begging off with one excuse or another, but now Erik can see him off in the distance, outside, kneeling on the ground in front of something he can't see.

"He's visiting his mother."

Raven's voice startles him, though he remains stoic as she leans in to look as well. "We haven't been home since Charles got accepted to Oxford. About six years ago, I think. If you ask, he'll tell you it's because he likes England more."

"How," he clears his throat, because this wasn't a commonality he had been expecting. The loss of a mother. "How did she pass?"

"That's a story you'll have to ask him for," she responds, and he can hear both the sadness and hardness in her voice. "And if you stick around after this is all over, and prove that you're not as big of a jerk as you come across, you can ask him about the room on the other side of the bunker, too."

She pulls away, and Erik keeps watching Charles.

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><p><strong>AN:**

_I overused Darwin and love Sean. Oh well. _

_Also, **Paradox-Imagination** mentioned in their review that they would love to read a multi-chapter Erik/Charles fic where they help the children deal with their pasts … I really love that idea (because it's Erik and Charles and the KIDS and I LOVE Erik and Charles and the KIDS), so I think I will be taking that on. (: It will posted as a new story, darker and more graphic and angst … and fluffy… maybe in a couple of days. Any opinions, thoughts, ideas, etc on that are also loved. _

_Otherwise, let me know what you thought? Please? (:_


	3. insomnia drabbles

_**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men. Marvel does.**_

**A/N: Again, you guys are just freaking amazing. Do you know that? _Iloveyouall. _In that "I want to throw pie in your face" kind of way. It means love. You know it. XD Here's some Insomnia-based drabbles I had laying around for this universe. Chipping away at my Writer's Block. I think it may be gone :) Anyway, t****here's a special note regarding the multi-chapter at the end of this. I would love feedback from you guys on it via either PM or review, if you could. **

**Or not.**

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><p><strong>insomniacs<strong>

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><p>The rich spoils of Xavier Mansion are nice - beyond nice, even ("dude, you have a fucking <em>castle<em>?"), but when the lights go out and night settles across the sky, it is not what the children are used to.

Charles had felt the beginning of their unease when he had finally managed to get them off to bed (accomplished only when Erik had off-handedly informed them all of a seven-am-sharp wake and run) - tendrils of confusion and little pings of subtle fear had timidly knocked at his mind as Raven had lead the three boys to their new rooms. He had made sure to put each in their own, and had seen to it that each room was one of the less frightening ones (why his mother had decided a portrait of his grandfather, post-mortem and mixed with his ashes, was the perfect painting to place over a bed was beyond even his comprehension ...)-had even aired out the bedding and fluffed the pillows himself. But-

"Are they alright?" Erik's voice is soft, flowing over the chessboard in interruption of Charles' thought process as he overtakes one of the telepath's pawns with his own in a surprisingly gentle manner. His eyes, the eerie mixture of gray and green (pewter, Charles), glow in the firelight, and he is looking at Charles as though he is already aware of the answer, but not certain enough in it that he has to ask the question to be sure. Charles, for his part, is frowning at something other than the game, fingers pressing to and rubbing against his temple almost absently.

Because it has been a few hours, and the unease has grown to restless discontent that it as a whole is not easy to sift through.

"It is difficult to say," he admits on his breath. "They are troubled, but then it's always hard to adjust to a new place. Tell me, my friend." He gives Erik a look, his hand falling from his head. "Do you intend to sleep well tonight in this new place?"

"I have moved around for the majority of my life, Charles," the older mutant reminds him dryly. "I sleep where I drop, for the next day I keep moving."

But this is not a temporary place, or at least not as temporary as the others. And this place is warm, and welcoming, and so very very different from anything he has ever experienced before, they both know. Different from anything the boys have ever experienced before. Charles' mind pulses in ache. Like the children, he knows Erik will not be sleeping tonight.

And Charles, surrounded by memories and taunting echoes of haunting phantom voices, has no intention of doing so, either.

"I think we can delay the morning's run," he suggests nonchalantly, "and have a late night of chess and more drinks." _Because getting intoxicated is the only thing that keeps them all away._

Erik says nothing to contest his words, but Charles pretends the terribly slight smirk that forms on his face is from triumphant amusement and not bitter understanding.

That is another battle for a time after war.

**-x-**

Sean's strange habits come to their attention when Charles slips downstairs at an odd feeling, and Erik follows.

Because Sean falls asleep in the kitchen every night, and it is not by the refrigerator that he makes his bed (despite how enthralled he is with it).

No, Sean curls by the stove, pressed into the gap between the heavy steal and the floor, arms crossed around his chest as he endures his troubled slumber. Though the youngest, he seems even smaller in the fetal position he adopts, and it strikes an angst-ridden poetic chord in Charles' chest that this was the boy they had found, all alone and yet just desperate for someone to hold and care for him.

His dreams are filled with shadowed images the pull fear from depths the telepath cannot enter, but he picks up the raw, trembling feelings of_ coldcoldcold_ and _solonelywanthome can'tgohomecan'tgohome thereisnohome_. It leaves him reeling and shaking and refusing to answer Erik's soft mental questions as they loom over the sleeping teen.

For the first few nights, they merely cover him in a blanket, as the stove and doesn't provide the warmth Sean's instincts tell him it does, and the floor is tile and chills at night. For those first few nights, they allow him to sleep where he wishes, where he feels comfortable, where he can feel safe.

Until the night they come downstairs, blanket ready, and see the red-haired boy tossing about, mumbling clear phrases of _"don't hurt me", "I'll b'good", "I'm sorry_". And then Erik is there before Charles, blanket forgotten, and is scooping Sean into his arms.

"Schlaf, mein Kind." The words are almost unheard. "Soyez en paix. Jesteś tu bezpieczna."

While Charles is certain Sean does not understand any of the languages Erik speaks, and while Erik is large like the men he fears, for some reason, Sean's words drop to mumbles, and he falls deeper into unconsciousness.

Erik glares at Charles, as though daring him to say anything, but the other man has seen their odd relationship before, and simply smiles and picks up the blanket.

Every night after that - every night - they carry Sean back to bed.

**-x-**

Charles notices that Erik sleeps from four in the morning until seven exactly - twelve minutes after Charles himself retires to his room. They are hardly healthy hours, but Charles, who will not sleep until everyone else is safely secured in their dreams, sleeps less, and has little room to speak.

But he allows Erik to believe that _he_ is the last to fall asleep - lets his friend have that calm, that power, because he knows that Erik is like himself, and needs to believe that every charge under his care is safe before he takes care of himself. It is something the metalkinetic likes to believe is secret.

Charles, curled against his pillow and gently pushing away the nightmares of them all while keeping his own on the edge of his psyche, let's him believe that too.

It is no self-sacrifice.

* * *

><p><strong>x<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

Ugh. _Google-Translate_, so horrible ... yet I still use it to decode my homework instructions. **Translations: **Schlaf, mein Kind - Sleep, little one. Soyez en paix - Be at peace. Jesteś tu bezpieczna - You are safe here. German, French, and Polish respectively.

I have an Erik-Sean drabble of this story sitting on a different computer - it shows the strange relationship Charles mentions. I'll probably post it. And yep! No Alex, Hank, Angel, or Raven ... maybe I'll post them too. XD I really want to work on the long version of this, but as you can see I took _Healing Crisis _down. I think I want to rework it to be an AU, where it deviates from the film at the scene of the CIA attack, which would void some of the previous drabbles. I could just do a "sequel". But I love Darwin. I can't decide. . . _**Suggestions?**_

Anyway, I'm writing all weekend. Lots of updates and new stories. Sorry to anyone who has me on Alerts.

Let me know what you thought? :)


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